


Passing on the Heritage

by hoosonja



Category: Ylvis
Genre: Childhood, Christmas, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-21
Updated: 2015-10-21
Packaged: 2018-04-27 11:05:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,941
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5045830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hoosonja/pseuds/hoosonja
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bård and Vegard are staying at their paternal grandparents house for a little while. Bård has a cold and is feeling bored.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Passing on the Heritage

Bård opened his eyes and listened. It was unusually quiet in the old farmhouse in Sognefjord, that belonged to his paternal grandparents. Normally there were always some noises coming from the kitchen or the den where his grandmother kept the sewing machine. He couldn’t hear his grandfather’s low voice or his brother’s incessant yammering either. Curious, he got up, slipped into his clothes and pounded down the stairs.

At the bottom floor he stopped to listen again and now he could hear a faint clicking sound that seemed to come from the living room. He followed it and found his grandmother sitting in a rocking chair with metallic needles and colourful yarn. When she heard Bård, she lifted her gaze and smiled kindly at the confused-seeming tow-headed boy.

“Hey there,” she said.

“Where is everybody?”

“Your grandfather took Vegard fishing. They left quite early and I thought it might be best if you stayed behind, with your cold and all.”

Bård smiled widely, happy to have dodged the bullet. He was way more into staying indoors and sleeping late than getting up with the sun.

“Go get yourself some breakfast and then come back here, perhaps I can come up with something for you to do.”

“Okay,” Bård acquiesced and was soon rummaging around the fridge, looking for something nice to put on his slices of bread. He really didn’t like eating cereal so much, there was something there that made his tummy hurt. He chose some yellow cheese and sliced a couple of pieces off the big chunk and also picked a few slices of smoked meat. Orange juice was his drink of choice and soon there was nothing but breadcrumbs on the plate, which he took to the sink. Then he returned to his grandma. 

“Thanks for breakfast, I’m done now. Did you say you had something for me to do?”

“Sure,” she said, stood up and moved to the white, wooden pull-up couch that lay by the window. “Come, sit here by me,“ she said, patting the empty space next to her.

Bård moved there obediently, wondering what she had in mind. She reached for a big box that didn’t seem too heavy and asked him to open the lid. Not knowing what to expect, Bård carefully peeked inside. He saw a pile of colourful balls of wool yarn and was mystified.

“There’s a bunch of balls here,” he said slowly.

Grandmother nodded and smiled.

“Indeed! Why don’t you pick one?” she suggested.

“What for?”

“Just choose, please,” she repeated patiently.

While Bård rummaged through the colourful yarns, grandmother picked up a pair of knitting needles that were each a different color and had smiling faces at the end of each. Eventually Bård chose a fairly thick, bright red yarn and held it up triumphantly.

“This one!”

“A good choice,” grandmother smiled at the boy.

“What now?” he asked impatiently.

“Give it to me and I’ll show you,” she promised.

Bård handed the yarn over and grandmother picked up both the yarn and the needles she had chosen.

“Look,” she said. “This is how you make the starting loops,” she continued, as she held the two needles together and looped the yarn around them, one loop at the time. She did it slowly at first, but soon sped up and it looked like a magic trick to Bård. Then she pulled the other, red needle, away from the loops and ended up with a series of loose loops on one needle.

“See, this is what happens next,” she said and took the needle with the loops to her left hand and the empty needle on the right. “You push the needle through the first loop like this,” she said as she did the move, “and then you catch the yarn with the needle and pull it through the loop. Then you let the old loop fall from the blue needle and catch it with your red needle.”

Bård followed the movement of the needles carefully. It was almost hypnotic how the needles moved back and forth, catching and releasing the loops of the yarn. Suddenly grandmother shoved the needles onto Bård’s hands.

“Now it’s your turn,” she grinned.

“Mine?” Bård squeaked. “I don’t know how…”

“Don’t worry, it’s like a musical instrument, you’ll just have to learn certain moves your fingers have to make and then you’ll have it!”

Bård stared at the needles and the yarn on his lap. He remembered how he had first fumbled when he had been learning to play the recorder, but how his fingers instinctively knew where to go now, making pretty melodies come out of the instrument. _I can do this,_ he thought. _It can’t be that hard after all._

There was a look of utter concentration on his little face as he tried to catch the elusive yarn through the loops and every time he managed, he looked up at his grandmother, his face beaming. When he got to the end of the needle, he looked perplexed.

“Now you just turn it around and start again,” grandmother said.

But it proved to be a lot harder this time around, he had knitted the stitches, too tight and could barely squeeze the needle in. Grandmother could see he was getting frustrated and gently took the needles from the boy’s hands. She knitted a looser round to make it easier for him and as she did, she talked. 

“Do you remember the fairytale about Goldilocks and the three bears?” 

Bård nodded slowly and wondered what the story had to do with anything.

“She wanted everything to be just so, not too big, not too small. That’s what we want to achieve now, Goldilocks stitches. Ones that aren’t too loose nor too tight.”

Bård nodded again, there was a logic to her words. He picked up the needles and started a new round and it was a lot easier now that she had loosened up the stitches. Bård did his best not to tighten up the yarn too much, but ended up making the stitches too loose instead and dropping the needle that held the stitches. He made a disgusted sound and shoved the work to his grandmother’s lap.

“I didn’t peg you for a quitter, Bård,” she chided gently. 

Bård’s cheeks flamed with embarrassment and he silently took the needles back when she was done with picking up the fallen stitches.

“But it's so hard!” he complained.

“I believe in you,” she said with resolve in her voice. “You’ve always been resilient with learning new things, so I have no reason to believe you couldn’t do this.”

He tried again and grandmother followed his progress closely, quietly hinting if his stitches got too tight or too loose. Slowly but surely his knitting got more confident. By the time there was a noise at the front door, signifying the return of Vegard and grandfather, Bård had already managed to knit a good couple of inches. He hurriedly pushed the needles and yarn back to grandma, he didn’t want Vegard seeing what he had been doing. Bård felt it was somehow more of a feminine thing to knit. He’d never seen his father do it, even though he did a lot of things with his hands, but it was always something like woodwork. Bård was afraid that Vegard might think less of him if he saw him knitting, so he decided to keep it a secret. Grandmother chuckled at the boy, but packed the knitting into a little bag and later handed it to Bård, making sure Vegard couldn’t see.

“Here, in case you get bored again.” 

“Thanks,” Bård said.

He took the bag home and almost forgot about it for a few months, until it was early winter and time to think about Christmas presents. Being a little boy, it was a bit hard for Bård to save, there was always some interesting magazine or candy to spend his money on, so he was pretty much penniless. That’s when he remembered the knitting.

He rummaged around in his slightly messy room and managed to find the bag that held the needles and the yarn. He tentatively picked them up and noticed he still remembered what to do with them. He soon lost himself in the repetitive action and was almost caught by Vegard, on more than one occasion, over the following few weeks. When Bård looked at the resulting red piece, he thought about Vegard, how it would be perfect for him, with his dark hair and all. Bård knitted as long as he had yarn, ending up with a scarf that was almost a meter and a half long. Then he called his grandmother, who in turn explained to him how to finish the piece.

When he was all done, he searched for paper to wrap it in, only finding the local newspaper. He shrugged to himself, a wrapping is a wrapping. He finished the package with a left-over piece of the same red yarn he had used for the scarf and thought it looked festive enough. He hid the package under the tree to wait for the time of opening the presents.

The family had gathered around the tree and the boys' father picked up presents from under it, one at the time, and passed them on to the recipients. 

“Who’s this for,” he asked when he held Bård’s present in his hand. “It doesn’t have a name.”

“I think it's for Vegard,” Bård said shyly. 

“Here you go,” father said as he handed it over to Vegard.

Bård felt anxious as he watched Vegard tear open the present. He was deadly afraid his revered older brother would be disappointed with the present. His face had a distressed expression, his brows were knit and his lips pressed tight together.

Vegard was too busy opening the present to pay any heed to Bård. When he pulled out the red knit, Bård’s stomach got filled with butterflies. The moment of truth was at hand. _Please please please_ Bård thought and balled his hands into fists.

Vegard turned the scarf around in his hands and looked at Bård questioningly.

“Who’s this from?” 

“It’s from me…” he answered timidly.

“Why did you buy me a scarf?”

“I made it myself,” Bård answered quietly, almost embarrassed of himself.

“You’re kidding! No way,” said Vegard, looking at the scarf anew. “I really thought you had bought it from someplace,” even when he saw the uneven result.

He could see it was made by an inexperienced knitter, some of the rows were tight and some loose, and there was no consistency like in their grandmother’s work. But the fact that Bård had made it for him, probably spending hours making it in secret, warmed Vegard’s heart. He really was quite impressed with his brother’s achievement.

“Oh, it’s nothing really,” Bård shrugged modestly, but blushing with pride.

“Thank you so much! I love it!” Vegard said and patted Bård’s back.

Bård felt a flood of relief when he saw the delight dance in his brother’s eyes. _He really likes it!_ he thought and a broad smile split his face. 

“It was nothing,” Bård said modestly, but the whole family could see his pride.

Every time Vegard wore the scarf, he remembered the thought and devotion that stood behind it and to him it was more important than anything else Bård could’ve given to him. He ended up wearing the scarf for several years, until he lost somewhere, school probably, since the year after that a familiar-looking scarf adorned the giant snowman the kids had built on the school yard.


End file.
